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"You just have to jump"

Simona

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Hi everyone, I’m Simona, 27 years old, from Italy.

I just finished reading both The Millionaire Fastlane and Unscripted and I loved them both. They made me think about when I realized that the scripted way was not for me and now I would like to share my story with you.

I studied Finance in Milan and started working before graduating. I thought Investment Banking was my way, but I’ve not been confirmed after the summer internship (thankfully I can say now). So I tried something similar: consulting. I spent 11 months in a big firm, but I could not believe that I would have spent the next 15-20 years of my life to become like some people working there. I knew that my way was to become an entrepreneur - I just did not know how.

The first time I had the epiphany was at 21, when I realized that Mark was creating Facebook as well as other innovators were changing the world at my same age. They were having an impact! Leaving a sign! Making millions! And what about me? I was comparing exam grades with my mates. Something was wrong.

This feeling grew stronger one day during my internship, when all my colleagues were scared and anxious and stressed out because of a meeting we would have been attending in a few hours with the CFO of an important company. Again, something was wrong: I did not want to be the guy preparing the papers, frightened by the important guy. I wanted to swap places.

When I got back to university for my last year, I enrolled in a class about Entrepreneurship and Business planning, to figure something out. We had to “create a startup” in 4 months and present it and its results for the final examination.

I pitched my idea and 4 guys joined me. We created a startup that created boxes of ingredients, ready to prepare meals in a few minutes. I thought it was a revolution...just to find out a week after the exam that a REAL startup incubated in my SAME university was already doing it. Lesson learned: you cannot “pretend” to create a company - either you do it or not.

Anyway, thanks to this course, I had the third epiphany (yeah, I mean, I just wanted to be sure) when my colleagues in consulting were trying to predict the future of a new little Italian fintech startup comparing it to an ex startup with millions of revenues in the past 10 years in the fashion industry - my face was like “are you kidding?”. I realized that I knew more than them on startups and that I should use this knowledge for something useful. For example creating my startup.

That’s when I contacted on LinkedIn a guy from my town who created a startup exactly as it was in my mind and told him “I want to do the same”. He replied “you just have to jump”

And I jumped.
 
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Everyman

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Great intro @Simona !

Come stai?

Nice to have you here and you will be delighted about people here.

So what is the outcome of your jump? Are you falling down? Ascending? Descending? Gliding?
 

Simona

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Hi guys! Thank you all for your warm welcome :smile2:

For those who asked, I will update my post.

I jumped: I left my job in consulting with no other offers. I was not looking for another place, just to figure out how it worked somewhere else.
The very next day I met the guy I contacted and visited his startup offices. They needed help with the financial part so we started collaborating.

After 6 months this startup entered the cryptocurrencies space and organized a fundraising. It combined tech, finance and marketing, three fields where I had enough knowledge, so I offered to help them managing the project.

The next 6 months have been the most exciting and challenging of my life (until that moment). I traveled the world, met thousands of crypto lovers, pitched the company on several stages, and found new friends. We faced loads of difficulties, but eventually it has been a great success and we are proud of it :)

After working 20h a day, 7/7, I felt exhausted. It was a strange emotion, as if I have been experiencing the life of an entrepreneur, but not working on something of my own.

In April 2017 I decided that it was my moment. I always loved the food industry and dreamed of creating something. "Fake it till you make it": I acted as I was onto something, left my apartment and went around the city to understand how the food truck industry worked.
It didn't take me long to understand that it was not for me :happy: but I was in! I begun my path! I took a picture to commemorate the moment.

The following months I've been working on a project about nicecreams with two guys. Unfortunately one of them could not work with us anymore after a few weeks, so we put the project on hold. From this experience I learned that people have different needs and priorities.

Given my previous experience in cryptos, a friend of mine asked me to join him and fund a fintech startup. We created an app to trade cryptos directly from mobile phones. It was a great idea, great product, but poor timing: the so-called bubble exploded the previous winter and people were not investing in new startups.

It took us a year to find a partnership with another company and integrate the two apps. This time I learnt that you can't control the market, but especially you need to involve customers in the creation of your product - and that, because of this, you risk to spend one year with no wage.

In the meanwhile, my boyfriend broke up with me, I had to change city and go through panic attacks and depression. I managed to exit this period being strong, exercising and meeting friends. Fortunately, I found my amazing love who makes me happy everyday :)

The integration took us time to work together, and again, I felt like working for someone else. I was overwhelmed and thought there was something wrong. I started wandering about the nicecreams project and similar opportunities.

One day I was walking my dog and asked myself a simple question: "what are you good at? What can you do?"
The answers could have been many - from "manage communities" to "trading" to "understand emotions". Instead the first thing I thought was "Hummus. I can prepare hummus" :rofl:

Well guys, I've been on my new hummus company since the last 3 months and I've never been happier!
 

Suzanne Bazemore

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What an interesting story, @Simona - welcome to the forum! I'm glad you had those epiphanies and then decided to act on them.
 

MJ DeMarco

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Welcome aboard Simona!
 

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